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Today's
Stories
November
1, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony
October
31, 2007
Bill
Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice
System
Rev.
William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News
Ray
McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel
Eric
Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War
V.
G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet
Luis
J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA
Sheldon
Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World
Walter
Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare
Website
of the Day
Boogie Rocks!
October 30, 2007
David
Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen.
Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual
M.
Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question
Andy
Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against
Gitmo
Patrick
Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba
Anthony
Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws
Floyd
Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means
Sherwood
Ross
Giuliani and Torture
Website
of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide
October
29, 2007
Lisa
Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts
Joe
DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections
Patrick
Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan
Isabella
Kenfield /
Roger Burbach
Corporate Murder in Brazil
Fred
Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner
Farzana
Versey
Caricaturing Islam
Stephen
Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy
Marcelle
Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord
Eamonn
McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables
Martha
Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!
Website
of the Day
Campaign 2008
October
27 / 28, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There
James
Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture
Ralph
Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law
M.
Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!
Robert
Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations
Jacob
G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree
Missy
Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing
John
Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca
Robert
Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader
Ron
Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads
Ali
Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran
David
Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?
Poets
Basement
Block, Davies and Ford
Website
of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video
October
26, 2007
Brian
Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed
Saul
Landau
Portrait of Rudy
Ahmad
Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case
Franklin
Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're
Sorry?
Mike
Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest
Dave
Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians
Alan
Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush
Yifat
Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror
Website
of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison
October 25, 2007
Jeffrey
St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror
Col.
Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment
Alan
Farago
The Way to Paradise?
Chris
Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels
Brian
McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush
Cindy
Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III
Website
of the Day
Support the America's Program!
October
24, 2007
Natalie
Washington-Weik
White Fantasies About Race-Based
Intelligence
Andy
Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicides
Michael
Birmingham
What Happened in Nahr Al Bared?
Corporate
Crime Reporter
The Nuclear Democrats
Tariq
Ali
Bush's Cuba Detour
Farzana
Versey
Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf
Dave
Zirin
White Noise
James
Murren
What "Support Our Troops" Means
Todd
Chretien
Looking Reality in the Face
Martha
Rosenberg
What Came First, the Chicken or
the Cage?
Website
of the Day
Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power
October
23, 2007
Ralph
Nader
Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric
Lawrence
R. Velvel
Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law
Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept.
Vijay
Prashad
The Nuke Deal is Dead
Bonnie
Bricker /
Adil E. Shamoo
The True Cost of War for Oil
Dave
Lindorff
Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment
Mike
Whitney
The Big Squeeze
Farzana
Versey
Race with the Devil
Stanley
Heller /
Ben George
Something New from the Antiwar Movement
Marcelle
Cendrars
You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive
Regan
Boychuk
Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response
Website
of the Day
King Corn
October
22, 2007
Ishmael
Reed
Should Blacks Go Green?
Marjorie
Cohn
Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie
Rannie
Amiri
Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness?
Diane
Farsetta
Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong
Williams
Todd
Alan Price
Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public
Education
Robert
Jensen
The Quagmire of Masculinity
Stephen
Lendman
The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers
Jemima
Khan
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf
Sunsara
Taylor
David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth
Binoy
Kampmark
No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections
Website
of the Day
Support the Center for International Policy
October
20 / 21, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld
Tariq
Ali
A Massacre Foretold
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Greetings from Echo Park
Andy
Worthington
The Shame of Diego Garcia
Mike
Whitney
Housing Flameout
Daniel
Wolff
Play It As It Lays
David
Rosen
Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual
Revolution
Saul
Landau
David and Goliath in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
COINTELPRO and the Panthers
Robert
Fantina
The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones
David
Heleniak
Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm
Joe
Allen
Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS
Prairie
Miller
Lions for Lambs
Poets'
Basement
Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski
Website
of the Weekend
Crash!
October
19, 2007
John
Ross
Che's Mexican Legacy
Sheldon
Rampton
Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda
Rahul
Mahajan
A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha
Devra
Davis
Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer
Christopher
Brauchli
Blasphemous Science
Wadner
Pierre
Haiti After the Deluge
Bill
Quigley
Jailed for Justice
Website
of the Day
Textbook Sticker Shock
October
18, 2007
Saree
Makdisi
Academic Freedom is at Risk
Meg
Dwyer
What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead?
Alevtina
Rea
Sketches of Russian Life
Norman
Solomon
The United States of Violence
Kristoffer
Larsson
Something is Rotten in Sweden
Harvey
Wasserman
Nukes are Back and So are We
Website
of the Day
Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"
October
17, 2007
Steve
Niva
Counter-Insurgency, American-Style
Andy
Worthington
The Case of Mohamed Jawad
Alan
Farago
The Credit Shock
Russell
Mokhiber
The New Billionaire-Criminal Class
Sharon
Smith
Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered
Mike
Whitney
Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman
Robert
Fantina
Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual
Chris
Irwin
Where Have All the Rednecks Gone?
Website
of the Day
Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University
October
16, 2007
Peter
Linebaugh
Doris Lessing and the Dynamite
Prize
Paul
Findley
Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby
Robert
Bryce
Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts
Uri
Avnery
The Mother of All Pretexts
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Iraqi Genocide
Ray
McGovern
What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She
Know It?
Norman
Solomon
The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal
Martha
Rosenberg
The Curse of Cymbalta
William
S. Lind
Out of the Frying Pan
Joel
S. Hirschborn
Time to Boycott Voting
Website
of the Day
Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play
|
November
1, 2007
Selling the End
Times
The
Apocalypse will be Televised
By A. K. GUPTA
The Revolution, Gil Scott-Heron prophesized,
will not be televised, but at least the apocalypse will. It will
be televised and googled, blogged, vlogged and 24-7 entertainment.
It will be a CNN special; it will star fleeing celebrities and
a cast of millions; it will be sponsored by that delightful cockney-accented
gecko (and a multitude of oil companies).
Empowered by our media-rich environment, we can chronicle nonstop
the minutiae and magnitude of mega environmental disasters.
How times have changed.
When Mount St. Helens blew its top, we had to scrounge a few
photos in stop-action sequence to thrill to the Gotterdammerung.
Nowadays, Anderson Cooper would host the devastation. The fiery
explosion would be a screen saver and an ironic t-shirt, and
the thundering blast a ring tone. Within hours, footage of boiling
ash and lava would be mashed with Scandinavian death metal on
YouTube.
It's a brave, new world. The ever-inflating media universe allows
coverage of September 11, the Tsunami, Katrina and the Califlagration
to expand endlessly. Happening at the speed of news, these disasters
are picture-perfect television.
Not so for other calamities. The Southeast's drought may be threatening
millions and melting polar ice might swamp coastal cities around
the world, but shrinking lakes and rising seas do not titillate
like howling firestorms and rampaging tidal waves. At the other
end of the disaster spectrum, earthquakes are too fast and nuclear
war too totalizing to cozy up to as live-action spectacles.
For that we need Hollywood. In "The Day After Tomorrow,"
decades of global cooling were compressed into a few days, even
seconds, making the public's blood run cold with fears of a new
ice age. Alas, global warming seems just that - warming. It will
not foment a freezing backlash but a burned and parched planet.
It's appropriate that California hosted the latest catastrophe:
it's where Armageddon meets Eden. Hollywood may one day burn
as Public Enemy rapped, but not from social unrest, rather ecological
distress.
Tinseltown was a bit player in this drama. The guvernator was
powerless against Mother Nature; he was one of those pantywaist
politicians who crowd the sidelines of disaster flicks, issuing
motherly admonitions to stay indoors, listen to the authorities
and stop making so many phone calls! The heroic military of celluloid
fantasies was even more impotent as thousands of Marines surrendered
Camp Pendleton to the advancing flames.
Other movie royalty were mere extras in the exodus. Albeit escaping
in luxury, they didn't have to worry about camping out in a sports
stadium. This was the bright side, beyond the glowing mountains.
Despite a Katrina-sized tide of displaced, Qualcomm reaped a
PR bonanza with its branded stadium cum refugee camp.
It was a corporate love-in, with free Starbucks coffee, telcoms
providing free wireless, Ralphs Supermarkets trucking in food
and Costco handing out pharmaceuticals. There's a lesson here.
If the Superdome had business sponsors, then the displaced residents
might have received timely aid, and frivolous entertainment,
because of its brand-building potential.
But the yoga classes, blues bands and magicians at Qualcomm Stadium
couldn't hide the human hand behind the disaster. It started
with the small - a delayed response initially, overstretched
fire crews, needed equipment stuck in Iraq, National Guard troops
protecting the borders from Mexicans (while evidently letting
in sneaky Mexican posing as firefighters) - and progressed to
the large.
For more than a decade, Mike Davis has drawn the connection between
development and disaster. Pushed by developers and enabled by
local governments, the suburbs sprawl ever further into fire-prone
ecosystems. Davis famously argued "The Case for Letting
Malibu Burn," which it subsequently did in 2003 and almost
did again this time. Despite the obvious risks and public costs
in firefighting and rebuilding, Malibu and other tony neighborhoods
will be reseeded with nuevo gauche mansions by gilded elite demanding
official aid despite their anti-government ideology.
Why shouldn't they get special treatment? As the fires raged,
the overburdened state mobilized to protect the wealthy, whether
it was spraying Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg's Malibu beach
house with fire-retardant foam or county patrol boats hosing
down the Malibu Pier of "Baywatch" fame to protect
it against blowing embers.
It was a mirror image of Katrina. The danger zone this time was
the high ground, those rural-urban interstices thick with the
rich. But they could flee in fancy vehicles. Thousands lost their
homes, but the vast majority returned in days instead of being
flung across the country for years. The cost is likewise miniscule,
a billion dollars in Southern California compared to estimates
of $100 billion in Katrina-related losses. It would barely pay
for a few days of the Iraq War.
The feds and state will probably cover whatever the insurance
companies don't, beginning anew the cycle of development and
destruction. After all, many of these folks are Bush's base:
the haves and have-mores.
There is one important similarity between the California wildfires
and Katrina: global warming. There's an undeniable link between
hotter, drier conditions, stronger Santa Ana winds and the massive
wildfires. Warmer, earlier springs mean less snowmelt and greater
evaporation, which have created record-breaking drought conditions
and more fuel for the fires. The heat also intensifies the winds,
stoking the wildfires with devastating results. And this completes
the feedback, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
warming the planet more.
The mainstream media touched upon the connection to global warming,
but it received about half the coverage as the pets-in-peril
angle, according to a search on Google News. Meanwhile, the denialists,
such as CNN's Glenn Beck, still peddled their claptrap in prime
time. But they only took their cues from the Bush administration,
which is still censoring government scientists documenting the
extent and consequences of global warming.
Tracking the fiery Armageddon day after day became mind-numbing,
ultimately. There was no plot or character development, just
more of the same. The media interest died down on cue with the
Santa Anas, allowing us to get back to celebrity scandals. (The
public stopped flocking to showings of the Iraq War at the multiplex
ages ago.)
Down the road, some ecological catastrophe will grab our fleeting
attention, but for now there will be little heard or seen of
the slow-motion apocalypses: drought gripping both the Southwest
and Southeast; the Great Lakes drying up; thawing permafrost
and melting arctic ice. In the last instance, corporations are
filling the void, selflessly, of course, with plans for energy
extraction and new, cheaper shipping routes.
Here in New York City, we've been enjoying a particularly pleasant
catastrophe. In late October the ocean waters were as warm as
they've been all summer, and the streets and parks were full
of shorts and t-shirts and skirts. With the prospect of six-month
summers, New York might elbow out Southern California as the
new Shangri-La.
Eventually, however, something, or everything, will break. "Vector-borne"
diseases such as Malaria are expected to spread because of warming
as are water-borne ones like cholera. As temperatures rise, extreme
weather will become more so. This past summer, New York was smacked
by a tornado and unprecedented rainfalls that crippled subways.
Species extinction will accelerate as fragmented habitats in
the region prevent fauna or flora from shifting climes easily.
Perhaps drought will strike the Northeast, too.
But these are climatic bumps compared to a hurricane. With ocean
surface temperatures rising, there's potentially plenty of energy
to power a Category 4 hurricane to New York. It's unlikely, the
city says, but possible.
Recently, the city's Office of Emergency Management mailed brochures
to all New Yorkers on "Hurricanes and New York City"
outlining the dangers, how to prepare and evacuation plans. It's
based on the "screw-you" philosophy of governing, a
philosophy on display in California.
"With professional firefighters stretched to the breaking
point across California," The New York Times reported, "many
neighbors throughout the state were left to their own devices
this past week, manning garden hoses, axes and shovels to attack
the flames." It was a great opportunity to build familial
and community bonds as "exhausted families with children
as young as 7, doused their gardens and homes in water, as adults
and teenagers battled flames racing up a ridge toward their back
yards."
In New York, in case of a hurricane, the city "strongly
recommends evacuees stay with friends and family who live outside
evacuation zone boundaries." Consulting the color-coded
map, you see that pretty much the whole city - which is a bunch
of islands after all - is bounded by the evacuation zones. In
other words, get the hell out of Dodge long before the hurricane
hits.
But this never happens. Most people wait until it's too late.
Having no experience with hurricanes, and with much of Long Island
likely to be drowned by a monster storm as well, millions of
New Yorkers with no cars will try to flee west across a few tunnels
and bridges that traverse the Hudson River as a hurricane barrels
toward them. And the city is telling us to bring extensive "go
bags" and "emergency supply kits" that would have
a family of four lugging around 100 pounds of water just for
a three-day supply.
Not to worry, the city is opening shelters. For Manhattan south
of Central Park--where around a million people live - it has
generously designated two high schools and two colleges as evacuation
centers. The potential social meltdown mashes the worst of New
Orleans and Los Angeles. Take more than 8 million people with
no means of escape, all exits jammed and a pitiful few shelters
while lashing rains and deadly winds tear the city apart.
I wouldn't want to be caught in it, but it would look great on
television. It would be "Faces of Death" on a planetary
scale.
Or perhaps I could enjoy it if I had a bitchin' new iPhone. That
way, even as I was drowning in the aqua-calypse, I could watch
it on TV, blog about it, upload a video clip to YouTube and email
everyone I know to check it out. Because you're never as alive
as you are when you're in the eye of the media storm.
A.K. Gupta is an editor of The Indypendent, a biweekly
newspaper based in New York City. He is currently writing a book
on the history of the Iraq War to be published by Haymarket Press.
He can be reached at ak_indypendent@yahoo.com
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